The Doctor Dreams
by Laura Fones
Summary: The Doctor likes to eavesdrop on Rose's dreams and, one night, she wakes up.


Title: The Doctor Dreams  
>Author: Laura Fones<br>Character/Pairing: Ten/Rose  
>Rating: All ages<br>Genre: General  
>Summary: The Doctor likes to eavesdrop on Rose's dreams and, one night, she wakes up.<p>

Disclaimer: I own nothing.  
>Author's Notes: This piece is probably too speculative to be a crowd-pleaser, but I needed to finish it before I began earnest work on the DoctorRose Holiday Fixathon. Please R & R and I'll return shortly with more shippy ship-fic.

The Doctor stared into the emptiness of the Tardis console room. He eyed the golden ovules on the wall, looking directly into the low yellow light that originated there. He thought: she'll be asleep by now.

He crept up to her bedroom. The only bedroom.

Rose Tyler was a remarkable human. She was happy to eschew old and comfortable Earth concepts like diurnal sleep cycles and 24-hour days and the certainty of a tomorrow. She had adopted the Doctor's life of constant escape and inconstant everything else. She facilitated his madness.

He was happy to have her. Particularly when she slept.

When Rose slept, her mind went on grand adventures. Grander than the Doctor's. These adventures sprang from her unencumbered Earth imagination and the Bad Wolf's forgotten brush with the Time Vortex. Rose Tyler had seen the full expanse of the universe and, in her dreams, exceeded it.

She dreamt every night. And he liked to watch.

The Doctor didn't often tell people that he was psychic. It resulted in distrustful looks and awkward conversation. And it didn't help to try to explain that he was not "psychic" in the conventional sense—that he could just translate neural energy into images and ideas, in the same way that he could read the divergent time streams of the Tardis.

Wibbly-wobbly, brainy-wany.

Rose was asleep, as he suspected. Her face, half-lit by the hallway glow, was a mask of neutrality. Her breath fell evenly. Her pink mouth lay half-open. He could see the whitish glint of her teeth. A perfect sleeping face.

The Doctor knelt at the bedside and touched her temple.

Her unconscious mind was familiar: a foyer into unknown lands. Sometimes this foyer led to a landscape of planets formed by an unlikely coalition of geometric shapes. Sometimes there were oceans whose color defied every language. Sometimes there were creatures, consisting of molecules that had been turned inside-out and rearranged. Her sleeping mind was the sketchbook of gods.

But this was not her sleeping mind.

"Doctor," Rose said, opening her eyes.

Kneeling sheepishly, with his fingertips on her face, he said, "I thought you were asleep."

"And this is what you do to me when I'm asleep?" She asked.

He was silent. She moved under his hand so that his fingers entangled her hair. He began to pull away, but she stayed his hand.

"What were you doing, Doctor?"

"Nothing important."

"It's strange," she said quietly, so that he leaned in to hear her. "I felt you inside my head. I was almost asleep when I…is that what you were doing? Were you inside my head?"

He had grown so complacent in his nighttime voyeurism, in the certainty of not being caught, that he hadn't prepared a proper evasion. She searched his face in anticipation. Would it really matter if he lied?

"I was…reading your dreams." He confessed, "I do that sometimes."

"I don't have dreams."

"But you do," he contradicted. "The most wonderful dreams."

"How can you do that—read dreams?"

"It's a Time Lord thing,"

"And you think I'm too stupid to understand?"

"No," he said, honestly. "It's just a strange psycho-biological tick of my race. We can…" he paused. "I can decipher brain waves—turn them into pictures and sensations in my own head."

"Does that mean you know what I'm thinking all the time?" She asked, fear in her eyes.

"No, no, no," he assured her gently. "It's like…humans and long division. You have to concentrate on it. Maybe pull out a pencil."

She seemed to be turning his words over and he took the opportunity to stand up, casting a long shadow across the bed. "What do I dream about?" She said finally. "Do I dream about you?"

"No," he smiled ruefully. "You never dream about me."

She nodded. "What, then?"

He sighed, searching for any English word that could describe her dreamscape. He thought of the word "impossible," and deemed it too commonplace. He thought of the word "chimerical," and deemed it too obscure. He thought of the word, "unreal," before realizing that all these words, while literally true, lacked the weight of her revelatory mind. She had no context for it—she wouldn't know how to conceive a world that gob-smacked even the Doctor.

It would be like describing a chair leg to a fish.

"I've never seen anything like it," he said finally.

"But you've seen everything."

"No," he said. "I don't imagine that will ever be true."

She smiled after a moment, "So, my dreams surprise you?"

"Consistently."

"Can you show them to me?"

"That's not how it works."

She was silent for a moment and then motioned to the bed. He looked at her strangely. She beckoned him again. He sat beside her. "Can you show me your dreams?" She asked.

"I…would rather not."

She hit him. Not hard, but across his forearm. "It's only fair," she said. "You saw mine without permission. At least I'm asking politely."

He rubbed where she had struck him. "I'm not sure you'll like what you see."

"You don't have to hide anything from me, Doctor. "

"Because otherwise you'll hit me?"

"Because you can't scare me."

"Then, lie down."

Rose slowly returned to a prone position on the bed, keeping her eyes on him. The Doctor laid next to her, above the covers. He placed his fingers on both sides of her face and pulled her forehead against his.

"I haven't done this in six hundred years," he confessed to her quietly. His breath warmed her lips as he spoke. On his skin, she detected the metallic scent of the console room.

"It seems strange that you ever would have done it." She responded.

"I was a different man." He looked into her eyes. "Now, sleep."

They both closed their eyes and descended into unconsciousness. The speed with which the Tardis and the bedroom disappeared was enough to make Rose dizzy. The Doctor was used to it—making the decision to sleep rather than waiting for it to come—and remained lucid, though simply not awake.

They found themselves in a null space. Everything was dark. Only a faint awareness of the other's presence existed on the periphery of their sleeping minds.

Rose wanted to call out, "Doctor!" but couldn't speak. The darkness was beginning to recede.

Everything became red—the sky, the grass, the citadel—and Rose knew she had seen this world before. She heard a word, "Gallifrey." Was that the Doctor's voice?

Now there appeared two figures, gold and brown in the backlight of the red sun. She recognized the Doctor. She recognized herself; or, rather, an amplified version of herself. This Rose was glowing with something ancient and omnipotent—her eyes were luminescent amber.

"Bad Wolf," explained a disembodied voice. The Doctor? Again?

Her attention was drawn to the hands of two figures. They were entwined and wrapped in a long, black ribbon. Rose knew that this was significant, but did not know why.

The sky changed from red to black—an absence of space, atomizing the planet and everything around it. Everything but the two figures—Rose and the Doctor.

"My planet burned," the Doctor said. "Everything was lost."

With the cloying certainty of a dreamer, Rose said. "I can change that."

The universe lit up, became a crucible of life, and the red planet blinked back into existence. The two figures stood over their creation like two prehistoric gods.

Suddenly, Rose Tyler was awake. She began to move. The Doctor's eyes opened and he pulled her against him.

"It can be intense," he said. "To see another person's dreams." He wouldn't let her move.

"The Bad Wolf," she said. "We saw it everywhere, but I forgot…the Bad Wolf is me." She strained against his arm.

"Don't," he said to her

"Let me go," she insisted. "I understand it now. I understand what I forgot. What the Bad Wolf is, what she can do…"

"I know what you're thinking," the Doctor said. "But it's just the dream. It will fade in a few seconds."

"But the Bad Wolf can save your planet," Rose said, squirming. "She can save everyone and everything!"

"Shhh…" the Doctor said, pulling her head into his chest. "The Bad Wolf is gone."

"But I can become her again." Rose began to feel weak. "I can save…everyone…"

She started to wonder why she was fighting him. The image of a red sky fluttered out of her memory. The amber eyes that she had recognized faded from her comprehension.

Why was the Doctor in her bed?

Rose became aware of the Doctor's arms around her, the warmth of his chest on her cheek. It felt like waking up.

"Doctor," she said. "What are you doing here?"

His body seemed to relax a little. She wondered why it had been tense. He looked down at her and smiled.

"You were having a bad dream," he explained. Her body twisted against him, into a more comfortable position. His hands remained where they were, resting dormant around her torso. The hum of the Tardis returned Rose's mind to its familiar reality.

"Silly Doctor," she said, smiling. "I don't have dreams."

THE END


End file.
